Communications & Collaboration

Can your business profit by operating less than five days a week? This has proven to be the case in several test situations, including online school company Treehouse and the state of Utah. Now with warm weather ahead of us and the concept of “summer Fridays” in effect—where employees work longer days Monday through Thursday and get to leave early every Friday—perhaps your organization can be one of the next to realize the inherent benefits of a shortened workweek.

Are you already envisioning a more streamlined workforce? Not so fast. If your collaboration strategy isn’t implemented correctly, this can include 10-hour days with no time to “waste” during those precious in-office hours. Also keep in mind that the four day workweek is not an ideal fit for every organization, especially those that need to provide client support every business day as well as outside the office.

What you could gain, though, is a more-driven and focused workforce from Monday through Thursday, essentially making Thursday the new Friday. The perk of a shorter week may also allow companies to hire better employees and retain those they have longer, not to mention provide them all with a more balanced work-life ratio and less stress.

In actuality, the 40-hour workweek is a misnomer as most employees (more than 85 percent of men and 66 percent of women) report working over 40 hours each week. And while they’re working long hours, they are not necessarily making the best use of those hours. That’s because the answer to a more productive workforce has less to do with hours than it does with enterprise collaboration.

Esna offers several collaboration solutions to support your employees in their endeavors. Our iLink product suite, for example, can extend your Chrome browser without the need for additional desktop software, providing users with instant access to real-time communication tools such as voice, video, IM, call control and geo-location. There are four versions available:

iLink for Cisco is a jabber (a messaging and presence protocol) browser extension for communication tools. It allows users to collaborate across any device including Android, Windows, MacOS and iOS.